Subject: Lemons, Time:8:36 AM Date:2/25/92
>Date: Mon, 24 Feb 1992 07:52:16 -0600
>From: rickel@cs.utexas.edu (Jeff Rickel)
>Subject: Beer gone lemon
>
>I have had several commercial beers that somehow went bad and
>developed a lemon flavor, as if someone dumped some lemonade in
>them. On a similar but perhaps unrelated note, a few of my beers
>have had a very subtle hint of a citrus flavor. What is the
>origin of these flavors? If it makes a difference, I make
>partial mash ales with dried yeast.
>
>Jeff

This is a classic symptom of a an infection, probably pediococcus (sp?). Poor
sanitation ANYWHERE in your brewing system, post-boil, can allow the infection
to take hold. If it varries in the bottle, say some show signs of the
infection but others do not, then you didn't clean all the bottles as well as
you should have. If the entire batch is bad then the source could be anywhere.
The only thing to do is scrub everything you can and sanitize as much as
possible. The infection becomes more prominent with age as the bug consumes
the residual sugars and produces the acid which gives the resulting liquid that
citric character. BTW, this characteristic is desireable if you are brewing a
Berliner Weisse, however you want to be able to control the bug and only get it
into certain brews. It can easily become a "house characteristic" of your
beers if you are not careful. Last fall I got an assortment of bottles (Black
Bavarian, Oktoberfrst, Amber, and two wheats) from Sprecher Brewing in
Milwaukee. Randy makes several traditional wheat beers and I believe his
Milwaukee Weiss is in the style of the Berliner Weisse Aat least the ones I had
tasted that way!). Alas, every bottle of the assortment had signs of
infection! All the date codes indicated that the beers were from September,
91. I believe that Sprecher is having some of his beer brewed under contract
now. Perhaps the problem is with the contract brewer...